Raising a child costs between $13k[2] and $35k[1] per year in the USA – depending on where you live and who you ask.
With a minimum wage job ($7.25/hr) you need to work about 5 to 13 hours per day to make that much – before taxes.
[1] https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/cost-raise-child-2023
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/090415/cost-raising-child-america.asp
Adoption is not the silver bullet people seem to think it is. If the baby isn’t white, or has health problems, there’s a much higher chance they’ll end up in the foster care system.
Separately, carrying a pregnancy and giving birth are extremely dangerous. Depending on which state you look at, American women face the highest maternal death rate in the developed world. Also, the leading cause of death of pregnant women in America is intimate partner homicide, and intimate partner violence frequently escalates during pregnancy. How does adoption fix those problems?
Uncertainty and risk are ever present and bringing a child into adverse circumstances is scary. I don’t have any silver bullets to address the multitude of problems you listed. I do know, however, that if we treat every human life as precious, in utero and out, child and adult, that we will live in a better world. If we live in the truthful acknowledgment of the sanctity of life then we will have to forge a better future for the children that are deserving of their chance in life no matter what hardship awaits them. Our judgment is imperfect and shouldn’t dictate whether anyone, particularly an innocent, dies.
Then you and the people that agree with you on what constitutes the beginning of human life need to be fighting tooth and nail for social services and social welfare programs to support people before, during, and after pregnancy/birth. “Life begins at conception” and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” are fundamentally opposing ideals unless they are only backed by cruelty, cognitive dissonance, and hate.
If you truly believe that all life is sacred, and that life begins with conception, you need to be turning around and fighting the people beside you on the importance of supporting the humans that are outside the womb.
Y’all need to get cracking on those incubators that can grow a whole-ass child from a couple of cells outside of a human womb. Otherwise, you’re just advocating for modern-day slavery. Poor look, my dude.